The Earl of Windermere Takes a Wife (Lords of the Matrix Club #1) by Jen YatesNZ

Author:Jen YatesNZ [YatesNZ, Jen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gyneva Books
Published: 2016-05-11T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

Sitting at the opposite end of the dinner table from Jassie was as insufferable as he’d thought it would be. Several leaves had been removed and the table reduced in size so that six people could sit around it and converse without having to shout at one another. Jassie was too close. It was too easy to lose himself in the hungry depths of her gaze when their eyes met down the length of the table. She was too far away. If he’d seated her at his side he could have touched her—safely surely—and allowed himself to draw her into conversation.

He wanted all he was entitled to as her husband and yet—he wanted none of it.

How could he face himself—or her—if he allowed himself to indulge in the fullness of their marriage and thereby destroyed that which he held most dear in all his life.

No. She had to understand it could never be more than it now was. He would return to London. The fighting might be over but the War Office would still have need of him—or he could take his place in the House of Lords.

So tomorrow, he would once again tear himself away from her, seek to lose himself in service to King and country. At least he had that. Deep in thoughts of keeping himself occupied and away from Jassie, he was interrupted by his mother, clearly intent on rousing him from the brown study into which he’d fallen.

‘Don’t you think, Windermere?—Rogan!’

The sound of his given name in a tone of voice unusually sharp for his mother, successfully snagged his attention. At his ascension to the title she’d taken to according him the respect due his exalted status and now rarely used his given name.

‘I’m sorry, Mama,’ he responded. ‘I didn’t catch what you said.’

‘That was perfectly obvious, my son. I said I have decided we should celebrate your marriage and the defeat of Bonaparte by having a house party here at the Abbey for the opening of the grouse season and a ball—as we used to when your father was alive. It would allay the gossip about the haste with which you were wed not to mention your absence since.’

A response was beyond him. He wanted to howl at her—his beautiful, gentle mother—and ask her what the hell she was trying to do to him? But of course he couldn’t ask that for she wouldn’t understand to what he was referring. She continued in the face of his silence.

‘I know the Duke of Wolverton has asked repeatedly when you’re going to reinstate the annual Abbey House Party at opening weekend. He’ll attend which will ensure that everyone else you invite will come also. The gentlemen will come for the shooting of course and every mama with an eligible daughter will come hunting a dukedom with a handsome and wealthy Duke thrown in.’

Rogan grimaced. At least his marriage would protect him from that sad mêlée. But would it protect his wife from Wolverton? The Duke

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